


Yearning

by last_illusions (injured_eternity)



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-14
Updated: 2009-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-17 08:53:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/injured_eternity/pseuds/last_illusions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are days when he wants to go back so badly it feels like it could pull him right off his boat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yearning

He is Malcolm Reynolds, _Serenity_ ’s captain, and she is his home, just as her crew is his family. He may want to smack some of them silly sometimes, but they are still his family, and he would go to the end of the ‘verse and back to save them if called to.

This, more than anything, is perhaps why he never says there are days when he wants to go back so badly it feels like it could pull him right off his boat. It’s always there, the niggling _what if_ that suggests the world that might have been if the Alliance hadn’t won its damn war. He doesn’t know Earth That Was, but that doesn’t stop him from thinking he might still be home—or at least a sight closer to it—than he has been since the war.

Sometimes, enveloped in silence, the _what if_ turns into a frustrated _should have been_. He’ll be sitting at the helm, taking over for Wash for a time, or in his quarters trying to go over the logs, and then it’ll hit him like a sledgehammer between the eyes. But he keeps it quiet, because speaking it aloud will cause nothing but pain and bitterness and discord, and it’s his job to keep them all together as much as he can. So he tamps it down behind firm expectations and a cracked wit and keeps everything else in check.

Then there’s Kaylee in the doorway, saying, “Captain, come join us. _Serenity_ ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

He looks up, sparing a rare smile for his sweet, bubbly mechanic. “ ‘Course not,” he agrees, rising from the helm and dropping a hand on her shoulder. “She’s still got the best mechanic in the ‘verse aboard ‘er.”

Kaylee grins at him, ducking out the door with the assumption that he’ll follow, and he does. He can’t _fix_ the past any more than he can stop thinking about it, but he _can_ join his crew in the mess and listen to Book’s crazy stories about the monasteries and join Zoe in telling their own about the regiment. Then he stops to think about that and shakes his head—this family is nuts.

  
 _Finis._

 _Feedback is always appreciated._


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